This editorial is written from the opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the other editors, the EBU or escYOUnited as a whole.

Well the epic marathon of “Expert” Panel reviews has finally come to a close… OR SO YOU THOUGHT!! Never one to let an opportunity to play with numbers pass by, I thought it would be interesting to have a little look over how we, the jury, performed and to see if there are any interesting things to note within the results. Yes, Israel may have won the overall trophy, but there are plenty of surprises in how we, the jurors, ranked the songs. I’m going to look at the individual jurors and let #YOU find out more about us! Who was the most generous juror? Who was the harshest? I’ll also have a quick look at how well we, the jury, agreed with #YOU, the televoters. Finally, I’ll look at how well we matched up with each other – as well as finding out just who really has their finger on the pulse of you, our televoters!

So our firstly to our jurors! Each of our ten jurors ranked every song from 0 to 10, with no collaboration when rating – basically similar to Eurovision itself. Of course, with our range of jurors, we got quite the range of opinions and approaches. Sometimes our personalities shone through as well, so why not have a quick look at who was the most generous and who was, err, less forgiving!

So we can see that Christian was easily our most generous juror, giving songs almost 8/10 on average. In fact, he gave no songs a score below 3, so I think he is rather enjoying this year’s spread of entries! At the other end of the scale, we have David who averages under 5/10 for each song, so treasure that 10/10 Italy – it was the only 10 he gave out this year! Perhaps this year is not quite David’s thing alas, but at least he still has some favourites. Overall, the average score given by a juror was 6.13, which was a little higher than the televote average of 5.90. Only a small difference, but it seems that we, the jury, rank entries just a little bit more highly than the average Eurovision fan!

Next it’s time to look at how the jury ranking compared to the televote. There are some surprisingly large gaps here too! Greece got 28 more points from the televote than from the jury (58 vs 86) and France got 27 more (63 vs 90). I wonder what it is that we are missing about them! In the other direction, I’m afraid to say that y’all criminally underrated Malta (64 vs 43) and Montenegro (66 vs 47). On average, we differed by about 10 points, but we did manage to agree on Sweden (59 points from each) and Lithuania (51 points from each). Below is a table showing the results split up by jury and by televote, as well as a reminder of the overall results, to show the differences!

This reveals some quite incredible disparities between the jury and televote scores! Israel, our overall winner, was only 5th with the juries and 3rd with the televote. Imagine if that happened in Eurovision itself! It just shows how easily you can end up with a compromise winner even with a 50:50 split.

Of course, these are merely the total scores, so they don’t quite give a clear picture of just how close our jurors’ tastes were. In order to look at this, I have simply taken the difference between the individual ranking for each juror for each song to come up with an average difference between two people across all 43 songs. I have also done this for each juror and the televote (with the televote score divided by ten to reflect the juror’s score being also out of ten). This allows us to see where people agreed the most and, of course, disagreed the most!

So… What does this tell us? Well, the table below shows the best (and worst!) match for each juror among the other jurors, as well as the televote.

The names highlighted in green show the best match overall and those in red show the worst match overall. Let’s have a quick look at the worst match: David and Christian. Perhaps this is less of a surprise when you think that David has the lowest average score and Christian the highest! On average, they differed by 3.93/10 with their scores. Despite this, they still both agreed a fair amount, with David’s sole 10 also getting 9 from Christian. Just maybe avoid playing Iceland to them both as they differed by 9 points on their ranking there! I should also note that my name comes up four times in the ‘worst match’ column – it seems that I struggle to agree with my fellow jurors on the merits of the entries overall. I also have the worst match with #YOU the televoters (we differed by 2.93/10 on average!), so perhaps that explains the occasional, err, questions I’ve received on the forum about my rankings!! On a more positive note, Zack and Connor had the best match of our jurors, with an average difference of only 1.86. Zack was the best match for half our jurors, as well as the televote, so clearly he is a chap with his finger on the pulse of Eurovision fans! Calvin wasn’t anyone’s best or worst match, so he was our middleman! Not too far away from people, but never too close either – perhaps the perfect mix of individuality and group thinking! One thing that is definitely worth noting is Zack’s incredible closeness to the televote score – this was actually the closest match of any pairing (1.55/10), so Zack is actually more in tune with the general fandom than any of the jurors are with each other!

So that concludes our coverage of the “Expert” Panel this year! We’ve seen some serious surprises, but it’s undeniable that the ESC United favourite, as chosen by both our readers and our jurors, is Israel with “Toy”! Will this prove to be the endorsement Netta needs to get the win, or will the fact she is such a compromise winner mean that another country can push past and claim the title? We have only another nine days to wait until we find out! In the meantime, many thanks to everyone who has commented on the posts and shared their thoughts on the songs, as well as everyone who voted in our televote. Y’all are the best!

Did the “Expert” panel live up to their title? What do #YOU think? Share your thoughts with us below or on our forum!

This editorial is written from the opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the other editors, the EBU or escYOUnited as a whole.

Just as we thought we were all set up for this year’s contest (only 15 days until the final guys!!), we find that the EBU has announced another change to the voting procedure. Whilst this is clearly not as headline-grabbing as the changes introduced in 2016 to split out the televotes and jury votes, I feel that it is still a significant change to the way things work at Eurovision this year and could result in a few surprises! The main difference is the weakening of each individual juror against the whole group and this has been achieved by using an exponential weight model instead of the currently used linear model.

So what does that mean? To a lot of us, “exponential” and “linear” probably don’t conjure up much of an image, but it’s fairly easy to explain. Up until this year, the jurors simply ranked all the songs in the semi or final and gave their favourite 1 point, right down to their least favourite with 26 (or however many songs are in the semi) points. Obviously this total is reduced by one if the jurors’ home country is also in that semi/final! The five jurors’ individual points are then added up and the country with the lowest total gets 12, next lowest gets 10 and so on. The flaw in the current system is that the weighting of your ranking is the same at the top and at the bottom. This might sound perfectly logical at first glance – it is certainly the simplest way of doing things – but the issue is that it allows one juror’s dislike of a song to pull it a long way from the group’s overall opinion. In an extreme scenario, if four jurors out of five place a song as their favourite and the fifth puts it last, it makes it very hard for that song to get the jury’s 12 points, even though it is the clear favourite. This allows individual jurors to effectively sabotage songs they don’t much like, or suspect that the other jurors will really fall for, in order to try and boost the chances of their favourites getting a higher total.

So what’s the alternative? Well, for example, you could only count the jury’s top ten towards the points given to a song, although this risks a number of ties. Another option, as EBU has chosen, would be to use an exponential weighting system instead of a linear one to allow high scores to have a higher weighting. Now, instead of giving more points to countries you dislike, you instead give fewer, so effectively the system is turned on its head (and reflects how the total jury points are allocated of course – higher the better!), but it’s no longer a simple case of 1 point per place. No, instead they are ‘weighted’, such that the points difference between first and second counts for more than that between twenty-first and twenty-second. The graph below has been released by the EBU to help explain the new method and clearly shows the significance difference!

The EBU’s exponential weight model – EBU

The idea of weighting your favourites should, in fact, come quite naturally to us Eurovision fans. After all, through the televote, we give points to our top ten, yet the famous “douze points” to our favourite! Whilst the weighting of our 3rd place to 10th place is the same (a song one place higher gets one more point), we give an ‘extra’ point to our 2nd place and so it gets 10 instead of the expected 9. We do the same with our 1st place and so it gets 12 instead of 10. And, of course, the difference between the 11th place and 26th place is a complete irrelevance as they all get 0. The new voting system for individual jurors more closely reflects how the jury totals are used when allocating points. Certainly, it will have its flaws – a song which is a strong favourite of one juror and disliked by many will now overtake a song which everyone places mid-field – but overall I feel that it is a robust change and should allow the jury vote to be more balanced. After all, a considerable amount of power is concentrated in the hands of the juries: Five people have the same say as the entire televoting population of a country!

Would you trust these five people to be as significant as your televoters? Germany did last year! – eurovision.de

So overall will this see a major change in results? Well, it should favour any entries which provoke stronger reactions, as it will only take a few jurors being fans to boost the score, as the low rankings of the others will count for less. Entries which all jurors find middle-of-the-road will suffer as they don’t get the positive attention a song will now need to do well in the jury vote. Oddly enough, this is similar to the situation in the televote – after all, how many of us ring up to vote for our 10th favourite song of the year? Most people will just vote for their top few songs, so again here songs which provoke strong reactions will do better than those which lots of people quite like. So to tentatively apply to this year’s songs, I would suppose Israel and Norway will probably do better as they certainly will have big fans and big dislikes! Perhaps Australia and Bulgaria will find it harder to get points if they don’t have big fans amongst the jurors. It’s certainly hard to predict how exactly it will change things, but I am sure we shall be looking closely to see how it did change things after the contest! The previous big change to the voting was a huge success, so let’s hope that this works just as well, even if it is a little more behind the scenes.

Will this really result in any big changes to who does well in the jury vote, and who will be the winners and losers as a result? What do #YOU think? Share your thoughts with us below or on our forum!

]]>Eurovision In Concert – View From The Audiencehttp://escunited.com/eurovision-in-concert-view-from-the-audience/
Sun, 22 Apr 2018 19:08:12 +0000http://escunited.com/?p=33448This editorial is written from the opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the other editors, the EBU or escYOUnited as a whole.

Last weekend, over three quarters of this year’s Eurovision acts headed to Amsterdam and the AFAS Live arena for the tenth Eurovision in Concert. I’m sure many of you will have seen their performances online and assessed how the different artists performed live as well as seeing what they got up to in Amsterdam whilst they were there. However, one thing that’s often maybe forgotten about is the actual fan experience of going to a Eurovision preview event. Well, look no further as I had the good fortune to be in the crowd for this year’s event, alongside three of my fellow editors!

A quick bit of background first; I saw the 2016 Grand Final live in Stockholm, but that was my sole live Eurovision experience until last weekend. I should also say that I do not frequent live music events particularly often, so apologies if I seem to be getting excited about things which seem perfectly normal to you!

My first reaction on entering the arena was “WOW, HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE HERE?!” And it really was packed! The arena can hold 5500 people and I’m sure we were pretty close to that. Instead of joining the ‘mosh pit’ (as I am reliably informed it is called), we headed to the standing area behind the bank of seats which, although far from the stage, afforded a fantastic view with no one standing in our way, although it did have the tendency to be in the spotlight from the extremely bright stage lights a little too often! The show was hosted by the Dutch 1998 and 2007 entrant, Edsilia Rombley, and Cornald Maas, who has commentated on the event a number of times for Dutch television. They did a great job of getting the show moving and soon we were off with the first act.

One of the things which really struck me during the Concert was that the feeling in the crowd is quite different to that at the actual Contest. There is a much stronger sense of camaraderie within the audience, with a lot more positivity for the performers. I suppose that the absence of a winner possibly contributes to this, but it made the whole thing feel a lot more relaxed and less intense than going to the Contest felt back in 2016. The crowd reactions overall fascinated me however. As you should know, ESC United has an ‘Expert’ Panel this year and as part of this we have been asking #YOU to rate each song out of ten as well to give each song a ‘televote’ score. 24 of the entries we have looked at so far were on stage last weekend, so I have looked at how the audience reaction compares to the song’s televote score in the ‘Expert Panel’.

Overall the results tie up quite well: The best reactions on the night were for Israel, Bulgaria, the Netherlands, Czech Republic and Spain. Israel and Bulgaria are currently 2nd and 4th respectively, with the Netherlands in 6th (although who can be surprised that Weylon got a superb reception in his home country?) and Czech Republic in 7th. Spain is a slight anomaly as it is 13th in our poll, but Spanish fans are widely known to be some of the most passionate fans for their home entry every year, so it is little surprise that they were cheering Amaia and Alfred on so strongly! Iceland, Serbia, San Marino, Moldova and Lithuania got the quietest reactions, which again roughly correlates with our televote poll, although Iceland and Lithuania were a little highly rated for the muted reaction they got, which could be of concern to them going forwards.

Another country which could possibly be a little worried is Macedonia. Currently lying 5th in both the overall and the televote rankings, Macedonia’s reaction was lukewarm at best in the Arena, which could foreshadow difficulties when it comes to Lisbon in just a few short weeks. There was, however, hope for Malta as they languish near the very bottom of our televoter ranking in 22nd: they got a fairly good audience reaction in the arena, so perhaps there is more support out there for the song than our ranking currently indicates!

So what else? Well, on a personal level there really is nothing like seeing the acts live. One of my least favourite songs this year is, possibly controversially, Israel. I gave it a whole one point on the ‘Expert’ Panel, yet seeing it performed live… Well, I was definitely tapping my feet to say the least. It just started to work better somehow! The song draws you in more than just seeing it on a screen. Other editors were finding the same thing with others songs of which they were not originally hugely enamoured – with Hungary being a particular standout in this regard!

Israel may work better live, but it’s still not my favourite Toy…

To conclude, therefore, I can heartily recommend trying to get to one of the pre-Eurovision events if you possibly can! You get to see more acts than you would at a Eurovision semi or final (we saw 32 acts, whereas the Grand Final will ‘only’ have 26). You also get to focus more on the song and the singer(s) than you would at Eurovision as the staging is minimal, so it gives you a more intimate understanding of how they approach their entry. You also get to see things you’d never see at ESC! San Marino’s entry began with the wrong music, prompting quite the glare from Jessika! Emilie was sadly unwell, so SuRie stepped up in her place for an English version of “Mercy” (as Jean-Karl put it “I have found another Madame for tonight”!). We also saw Equinox joined by Kristian Kostov, Bulgaria’s entrant from last year, to perform “Bones”. It was a really special evening and well worth the trip to Amsterdam! Hopefully next year I’ll be there once again – and maybe #YOU will too!

Which pre-Eurovision event would #YOU like to attend? Share your thoughts with us below or on our forum!

]]>Success Comes From Within? The EU Effect in Eurovisionhttp://escunited.com/success-comes-from-within-the-eu-effect-in-eurovision/
Tue, 06 Feb 2018 21:48:15 +0000http://escunited.com/?p=31992This editorial is written from the opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the other editors, the EBU or escYOUnited as a whole.

Tomorrow, barring any major surprises, the UK will select their entry for 2018 which will be the last time that the UK participates in Eurovision as a member of the European Union (EU). All over Europe, but especially in London, politicians and civil servants are working out how Brexit will affect the economy, industry, travel and so on. But it seems no one has considered the issue closest to our hearts. No report has been released charting the impact leaving the EU may have on the UK’s chances of success. Nothing, that is, until now!

It is well known across the Eurovision world that the UK hasn’t had a great time of it in Eurovision in recent years. Pre-qualification (PQ) to the Grand Final thanks to its status as a member of the Big Five has maybe eased the fears of qualifying from a semi, but with a best result of 5th in the last ten years – and two wooden spoons – the UK is hardly living up to its record as one of Eurovision’s most successful countries. Maybe, just maybe, by leaving the EU, the UK will shake off the shackles which have been holding it back for so long. Let’s look at the numbers!

Ahh, the halcyon days of the UK in Eurovision… – Eurovision.tv

As is my wont with these things, I have looked at the last ten years of Eurovision to assess whether there is a noticeable difference in success rates for EU and non-EU countries. Obviously, as the UK gets a pre-qualification, I am only concerned with final ranking, not qualification chances. Only countries that are full members of the EU are counted as being in the EU – Switzerland, Norway, San Marino etc. are all non-EU countries – and I have taken the UK as a standalone so it doesn’t count as either an EU or non-EU country. It should also be noted that, as there have been 25-27 finalists in this period, the “average” ranking in the final is 13.36, not a nice easy round number! So, let’s start with the UK’s average ranking… 19. Oof. Not a great result there. Clearly starting from a low base! Now, let’s look at how well the rest of the EU does…

14.43. Wow, OK, so perhaps our first shock so far; being in the EU actually means you’re likely to do below average! Despite the majority of recent winners being from the EU, you’re actually better off out of the EU in terms of final ranking, and by quite some margin as the average non-EU ranking is 11.35 – over three places higher than EU countries! Maybe this was the secret all along? Leaving the EU is actually part of a top-secret masterplan for British Eurovision success!

Theresa May, British Prime Minster, contemplating the UK’s victory in 2019; once freed from the handicap of being in the EU – BBC

Now, I am sure that some of you would like to point out that the all of the Big Five are EU countries, as well as half of the PQ entries in this period, and as such have pre-qualification to the final. This means that weaker entries do not get eliminated in the semi final, so it is more likely that the EU countries do badly because the PQs will always drag their average ranking down. This is actually true to an extent, as the average PQ ranking (again, excluding the UK) is 15.47, so even lower than the EU average. Perhaps then, this is the way forwards: Forgo a PQ and allow people more time to fall in love with the song and push it into the Grand Final!

So why does being in the EU actually harm a country’s chance? Well, firstly the EU countries tend to be the veteran Eurovision members and so have perhaps less to prove as they have a long-standing record to show off. Moreover, whilst the EU is indeed a powerful force for European unity, there are a number of long-standing groupings which straddle the divide – witness the Scandinavian countries where Iceland and Norway are out of the EU, but Finland, Sweden and Denmark are within it. Clearly these cultural similarities will easily trump EU membership when it comes to musical tastes. I am not comparing this to bloc voting – often cited just after the fourteenth country in a row has given the UK nul points – merely highlighting factors which will play a larger role in similarities in tastes.

Let’s hope we at least avoid this again for some time… – Eurovision.tv

So to conclude, it appears that the numbers favour an increased chance of success for the UK once we have left the EU. Perhaps we can throw caution to the wind tomorrow when selecting our entry, knowing that our true chance at Eurovision victory will come in 2019 when we enter the fray as a non-EU country. Given our recent dismal failures, I’m frankly prepared to hope that SOMETHING can make a difference!

Do #YOU think Brexit will herald a change in the UK’s fortunes? Who do #YOU want to see representing the UK this year? Share your thoughts with us on our forum HERE or join the discussion below and on social media!

]]>Melodifestivalen Voting Changes: Too Much Power to the People?http://escunited.com/melodifestivalen-voting-changes-too-much-power-to-the-people/
Tue, 23 Jan 2018 20:03:15 +0000http://escunited.com/?p=31477This editorial is written from the opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the other editors, the EBU or escYOUnited as a whole.

Today the official Melodifestivalen Twitter account announced that the decision had been made to change the jury voting system used since 1999 from a 12-10-8-6-4-2-1 system to a Eurovision-style 12-10-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. This means that only two of the twelve finalists will receive 0 from each jury, as opposed to five previously. This change is being publicised as giving “more power to the people”, as it spreads out the jury points more than they are currently. Certainly this is true; by forcing the juries to give more points to songs, their power to push for a favourite is diminished. Is it, however, giving too much power to the people? Could this actually be detrimental to Sweden’s chances this year? Let’s take a look.

Would you trust them to decide the winner?! – Image courtesy of Friends Arena

In 2017, Robin Bengtsson won Melodifestivalen with a 13 point lead over Nano, despite coming third with the televoters. The lead of 20 points from the jury voting easily overruled the 7 point advantage Nano had from the televote and this prompted a certain level of dissent from Eurovision fans across the continent that the juries had pushed for Robin’s entry too much and this overruled the voting public. It seems likely that this has, at least in part, prompted the change for this year, despite Christer Björkman (Melodifestivalen producer) saying otherwise.

But here’s the thing which often gets somewhat neglected: The televote difference between Nano and Robin was tiny; merely 1.3% of the voters. Agreed, Robin was the viewers’ third choice, but not by very much. It is, therefore, unsurprising that a slightly larger difference in the jury vote meant that this 1.3% was overruled and, it should be added, surely well within the margin allowed the jury to make such a call. If you think that a 1.3% difference in the televote should be more significant, maybe you don’t want to implement a 50:50 split in the voting! Moreover, as I outlined last week, allowing the jury to have a greater influence on results generally helps a song qualify at Eurovision itself. Remember that this third favourite of Swedish televoters came fifth overall in Kyiv, so hardly a bad decision to send him!

One of the arguments used to promote this change is that it reduces the spread of jury votes and therefore stops them from pushing a certain song too much. Let’s look a little more closely into this. Under the previous system, a jury awarded 12 points to their favourite song and split 31 points among the remaining 11. With 11 juries, this means that a song could receive 132 points from the jury at the very most (28% of the total available jury points). This means that the most a given song could be pushed would be with a lead of 101 points (all other songs receiving 31 points). Or, to put it another way, the televote would have to give an extra 101 points (or 21.4% of their total available points) to overrule the jury favourite.

The jury would have to do a LOT better than this to really push a song! – Image courtesy of SVT

With the changes, the jury again can award a maximum of 132 points in total to one song, but this is now only 20.7% of the total jury vote available (remember that the total points available has increased from 473 to 638). The remaining songs, again assuming they all equally split the remaining points, would each get 46 points, which means that now the another song would need to only get 86 points more than the jury favourite, which is only 13.5% of their total.

Now, that’s a lot of numbers flying around, and I can only apologise for that, but there’s a story to tell with them. Remember that, unlike the jurors, televoters don’t have to vote for more than one song. This means that the televoters could, theoretically, all vote for one song, which means that the jury is totally sidelined. Of course, this remains extraordinarily unlikely, but, in simpler terms, a song can guarantee victory with a 133 point lead in the televote (as the juries could give it 0 and second place in the televote a maximum of 132 points). Under the old system, this was 28% of the televote; under the new, it is only 20.7%. The juries have effectively lost a quarter of their power.

Now, of course, I have taken complete extremes here to illustrate a point. Clearly, no song will ever receive 100% of the televote, nor will the juries all conspire to push one song to the maximum, but it is clear that the power of the jury to influence results has been reduced in favour of the televote. Personally, I think it’s the wrong approach to take; the main issue with the Swedish final, as I explained last year, is that there are too many finalists and the use of the heart app dilutes the power of televoters. This is what should have been addressed, not the balance between jury and public.

As a final point to consider, let’s have a quick glance at Robin and Nano’s jury points had the new system been introduced. As all juries gave them both points (except Israel giving Nano 0, so I shall assume he was their 8th), it is possible to apply the new system to last year and see how this changes things! Robin ends up with 100 jury points and Nano gets 87. Already we see the gap closing! The televote points change too, as there are now 638 points up for grabs instead of just 473. This means Robin gets 68 televote points for a total of 168, whereas Nano gets 76 for a total of 163. So, after all that, it would have changed nothing last year!

“So you mean I STILL wouldn’t have won?!” – Image courtesy of Jessica Gow/TT

To conclude, therefore, it seems that this will, overall, have little impact on the winner of Melodifestivalen 2018, but it certainly is part of a shift towards the televoter instead of the jury. It has clearly been presented as such, but it seems that it manages to instead be a fairly ineffectual change which won’t really enhance the power of the televoters to determine a clear winner, whilst simultaneously weakening the jury’s power to influence the results. When you’re dealing with a gap of 5.7% between 1st and 12th in the televote, it’s always going to be a challenge to get a decisive winner. It’s this that needs to be addressed to get meaningful change!

Power to the people, or just a marketing ploy to get people a bit more excited about Melodifestivalen this year? What do #YOU think? Join the debate below or on our forum HERE!

Featured image courtesy of SVT

]]>National Finals: The Route To Success?http://escunited.com/national-finals-the-route-to-success/
Thu, 18 Jan 2018 22:56:57 +0000http://escunited.com/?p=31325This editorial is written from the opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the other editors, the EBU or escYOUnited as a whole.

Last year, I wrote an article which showed that, for the last ten years, it seems to make little difference whether an entry was selected via a national final or through internal selection. One thing which a number of people pointed out was that not all national finals are equal, with a variety of different selection methods used and approaches. So is there a secret to success hidden within the national final format? So in this article I aim to delve once again into the numbers and see if there is a seemingly successful way of approaching national finals.

Of course, there are numerous variations within national finals; voting methods, number of rounds, jury/public vote splits etc. so I have targeted a few to try and see what influence they have. I have looked at the number of rounds (whether having just the one or a number makes much of a difference), jury/televote splits, whether both the artist and song were selected, or if it was just one or the other, and whether the jury had any international representation or not. I would like to clarify that only the very final round has been considered for this analysis; so this means that any superfinals have been considered as the sole final round. This is simply because this was the round which determined the actual Eurovision entry, so only the voting method and system employed there has been considered. This is to simply have a level playing field. After all, every national final has seen numerous songs rejected by the broadcaster before the national final even begins, so, in a sense, is every national final jury-based? I say not, and so the logic carries forward to the superfinal. For this article, I have looked at 261 national finals from the last ten years. As we are counting qualification as an indicator of a successful national final, any national finals selecting entries that pre-qualified for the final have been disregarded. But this still leaves quite a widespread field! So onto the results!

Multiple Rounds: So simply whether there has been one sole round to decide the entrant or multiple stages. 166 national finals had multiple rounds and entries selected by this method have qualified 56.0% of the time. Not bad! But wait a moment… What are the chances that a national final winner qualifies? As I detailed in my previous article, it’s 56.3%. Ah, so basically this has no influence whatsoever on your chances of success! I was genuinely surprised how close the numbers were here; perhaps there will be some actual variation for other factors!

The ultimate in multiple rounds (11!) for a national final; Lithuania 2014. It didn’t help – they didn’t qualify! Image courtesy of LRT

Jury/Televote Split: So here we are looking at the level of influence of each on the final round alone. I have split these into three categories: Jury majority, equal weighting and televote majority. Given there is often a lot of fuss when the televoters are overruled by a jury vote, it will be interesting to see if this is a good call or not. When there is a jury with a greater than 50% weighting, the average entry qualifies 59.4% of the time. Finally; movement!! So it seems that the jury have a slightly better time of it when choosing an entry than the general public. Interestingly, when the weighting is equal, the qualification chances are still a smidge above average at 58.8%. It’s interesting that when the split is exactly that of Eurovision, the chances of the winning entry qualifying are still a little worse than giving the jury the majority say! Given the above, it’s probably unsurprising that a televote majority gives an entry a slightly below average chance of qualifying at 55.0%.

Is this really a surprise? The whole point of a jury is that they are experts in the field of music and will look at more than just the superficial elements of a song when judging them. Maybe the surprise comes in the fact that it does not make a massive difference; barely above 4%. Then again, given that the jury and televote are equally weighted in Eurovision, perhaps we should expect that a similar weighting in a national final would be the best reflection of how the Eurovision voting will go and therefore give the best chances of qualification? Interestingly, in 37% of national finals, the final round has been solely the televoters and here their chances of picking a qualifying entry drop to 53.6%, so it seems that the televoters should not be given the final say!

I should also point out that there have only been 32 (out of 261) national finals where the jury has been in the majority, so there is a higher chance of random variation when it comes to the results, but the overall trend is that the more that the jury can influence the results, the more likely (albeit not much more likely!) an entry will qualify.

Artist/Song Selection: Here I am looking at whether an artist/song combination was being selected or whether it was either finding a song for a pre-selected artist or finding an artist before internally selecting a song. It turns out that almost national finals (88%!) select a combination, which probably comes as a surprise to no one! So, with that in mind, it is also probably not a huge surprise that their chances of qualifying are… 56.1%! What IS interesting, however, is that there have been 10 artist-only selections and 8 qualified! Yes, I know, tiny sample size, but this offers the intriguing idea that maybe the song counts for less than the performer. Although having said that, 61.9% of the 21 song-only selections have also qualified, so maybe it’s the extra time spent focussing on getting the right song or the artist that counts for more than finding the full package in a national final. Again, small sample size (31 out of 261 which hasn’t selected both artist and song!) so it is possible it’s just small random variations, but still an intriguing possibility!

Demy – Greece’s 2017 entrant – an example of a successful song-only national final – Image courtesy of eurovision.tv

International Juries: So this looks at whether getting an international perspective on matters helps when finding a Eurovision winner! Obviously the 97 televote-only national finals have to be discounted here, so that means that the average qualification rate when a jury is involved is 59.5%. I will also admit that finding out exactly who was on a jury is not always the easiest, so I have assumed that a national final jury was purely domestic unless I can find evidence otherwise, which meant that 141 have been taken to be national jurors alone. They have a 58.9% chance of qualifying, which, clearly, is a little below the jury average. So yes, it seems that an international element helps out with qualification success as juries with international members have a 65.2% chance of qualifying! Again, there are only 23 examples I found, so small numbers may contribute to a skewing of the numbers. Interestingly it seems that there is a trend towards including more international jurors as only five national finals from 2008-2011 used them, whereas ten from 2015-2017 did. Maybe countries are wising up to the idea!

So to conclude, it seems that there really is not a lot that gives the extra edge when it comes to national final organisation. In all honesty, it seems to be more what goes on behind the scenes that contributes; sometimes it will also be just the quality of songs getting into the final. Basically it is stuff that is very difficult to quantify! Having said that, however, there are a few small suggestions I can suggest that could give a country the edge. Firstly, give the jury the edge in the voting; they are professionals for a reason and certainly giving full power to the televoters seems to be a disadvantage. Also, make sure that there is an international flavour to the jury; getting opinions from around Europe certainly contributes to success. Finally, maybe consider internally selecting either the artist or song and then finding the right counterpart in a national final. There have been so few that it is tricky to see if there is indeed a pattern, but taking the risk may just pay off with Eurovision success!

Do #YOU have suggestions for how to run a great National Final? Share your thoughts with us below or on our forum!

Featured Image courtesy of eurovision.tv

]]>Let The Public Decide… Or Not?http://escunited.com/let-the-public-decide-or-not/
Thu, 21 Dec 2017 21:44:04 +0000http://escunited.com/?p=30867This editorial is written from the opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the other editors, the EBU or escYOUnited as a whole.

The trees are up, you’ve heard the same old songs one hundred times already and you’ve not even got to open THIS year’s pair of socks from some almost-forgotten aunt, yet the 2018 Eurovision National final season has begun this week! Albania has once again kicked things off, so we have the exciting prospect of our first entry being revealed as an early Christmas present. Of course, we already know six of the artists who will be competing in Lisbon, but none of their songs as yet. This leads us to an interesting question: Is it better to hold a national final, or just to select your artist and song internally?

In order to decide, let’s start by looking at the winners from the last decade and their selection methods: Portugal 2017 (national final), Ukraine 2016 (national final), Sweden 2015 (national final), Austria 2014 (internal selection), Denmark 2013 (national final), Sweden 2012 (national final), Azerbaijan 2011 (national final), Germany 2010 (national final), Norway 2009 (national final) and Russia 2008 (national final). Notice a theme here…? Almost makes you wonder why countries bother with internal selections when it comes to choosing an entry! Only once in the last ten years has a country managed to win without consulting its citizens on its choice of entry. Surely this answers our question immediately? Clearly, if you want to win, a national final is the only way to go to stand a real chance. However, there are a few other factors to consider. Firstly, and possibly most importantly, we need to look at how many entries each year were internal selections (as if there were very few, it’s quite easy to see why very few have won!). Also, is measuring success solely by victories a fair criterion?

Conchita Wurst; the only winner selected internally in the last decade (image from newnownext.com)

So how popular are national finals? Well, after a bit of research, it turns out that we have had (excluding any pre-qualifying entries, so no Big 5 or host countries) 231 national finals, 91 internal selections and 30 entries which were selected through a combination of the two (either a single artist national final, or where the song sung in a national final was not the one which went to Eurovision). So two and a half times as many national finals as internal selections; which is of course important! Little wonder that so many winners have come from national finals if there have been a lot of national finals! Having said, that this still means that a national final entry has a roughly 4% chance of winning whereas an internally selected entry has only a 1.1% chance. None of the 30 entries selected using a combination of selection methods won, so few conclusions can be drawn from that method here! But clearly, if you want to win the modern Eurovision, a national final is the way to go as it gives you a much higher chance of success, even taking into account the larger number of national final selections.

However, as I alluded to, is it really fair to only measure success by victories? After all, it gives us a very small sample size to study with only 10 winners a decade. Perhaps it is also worth looking at qualification rates to see if this throws up anything interesting. Well, it does! On average, over the last ten years, 56.4% of semi-finalists have qualified. Those selected via national finals? 56.3%. OK… So pretty much spot on there! Via internal selections? 54.9%. Hm, so lower, but nothing significant! Interestingly 20 out of the 30 selected via a combination of methods managed to qualify, so arguably if you want to qualify, combine the know-how of the TV executives and the tastes of the voting public and industry experts to produce a more likely qualifier! So, despite the dominance of national final winners when it comes to tasting Eurovision victory, it seems that when it comes to qualification, it makes no meaningful difference whatsoever!

Of course, when it comes to a Eurovision winner, or even a Eurovision qualifier, there are many factors to consider. Indeed, not every national final is the same, nor are the motivations for choosing an artist and entry internally always similar. Perhaps it is unfair to compare them given the massive differences? I would argue not, given the simple basic difference that national finals involve the public, whereas internal selections all happen behind closed doors. The very fact that 50% of the Eurovision vote is from the public surely shows that to be a real Eurovision success requires public input in the selection. There are a number of different ways of achieving this, however, so keep an eye out in the New Year when I will take a closer look at the different kinds of national finals to try and determine which work the best! Merry Christmas and welcome to Eurovision season 2018!

Are national finals really the best way to go, or are countries just getting their internal selections wrong? What do #YOU think? Share your thoughts with us below or on our forum!

Featured image courtesy of SVT

]]>Why Do We Care About Running Orders?http://escunited.com/why-do-we-care-about-running-orders/
Sun, 09 Apr 2017 20:14:07 +0000http://escunited.com/?p=29074This editorial is written from the opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the other editors, the EBU or escYOUnited as a whole.

Eurovision has its “facts” when it comes to running order; there are death spots and there are places which make people go “ooo, they’ve got the perfect spot”. Surely success doesn’t depend that much on running order, or does it? It’s a sometimes controversial question; especially since 2013 the running order is decided by the producers as opposed to randomly. Are certain songs having an inadvertent advantage through favourable running order placement, or is it all just hearsay and an excuse for why our favourites don’t make it, or why our less beloved songs make it?

The pros and cons of a song’s place in the running order depend basically on two things; absolute position and the songs either side. As my esteemed colleague Calvin Philips has already covered the latter for this year in his excellent article here, I’ll only be looking at absolute position in this article. Of course, saying “absolute position” leaves a fair few angles to be covered! To be clear, not every semi-final has the same number of songs, so a song performing, for example, 16th could be the final song, the second last, just before a commercial break, or just after one! As a result, I’ll be focussing the analysis on the following four areas: Opening songs, closing songs, either side of commercials and absolute position. Also, I’m only looking at semi-finals from 2010 onwards (the era of two semi-finals where both jury and televote points counted towards the qualifiers). A small point to bear in mind before we begin: Over this period there have been 241 songs in semi-finals and 140 have qualified, so the “average” place should have a success rate of 58%.

So we shall begin with the opening songs (by which I mean the first four). Whilst second in the running order is often seen as the unlucky spot, here it is actually third which is the spot of doom! Only 29% of songs have qualified from here, although the general trend for the first few songs is that it’s not a great place to be. Even opening the show gives you only a 50:50 chance of making it. It seems somewhat surprising that going early is actually a disadvantage, but maybe it shows with 18-19 song semi-finals that the ability of the audience to remember the earlier songs is somewhat lacking, and so they suffer from being forgotten by the time voting comes around.

At the opposite end of the show, things are rather different. In fact, closing the show is the best place to be in the semi! Only one song has failed to qualify from that spot (Moje 3 in 2013, and even they came 11th) in the period of interest and over half have been in the semi-final top three. Performing second last is also a good place to be, with almost 80% of songs making it from there. It seems that being one of the last two to perform means you really stick in people’s minds when the voting comes around, so it’s certainly the best spot to get. Going further back, performing third/fourth from the end (not including songs which preceded or followed a commercial) shows that chances begin to fall a little. Third from last has a success rate of 70%, whereas fourth from last has never made it to the final (again, to be clear, this ignores songs which were either side of a commercial).

Even performing last couldn’t quite get them into the final – Eurovision.tv

Before the commercial breaks in the show, well this is an interesting area. Since 2010, we’ve always had one after the fifth song, but the second break has varied a little depending on the total number of songs, but always falling between after 12th and 14th. It’s an interesting picture! Before the first commercial break (5th in the running order) is not a good place to be again; only 43% of songs have made it from there. Having said that, being before the second commercial break (12th/13th/14th in the running order) is a great place to be as almost 80% of entries have made it from there. Oddly, coming after the first break is a good place to be with over 70% of entries making it from there, but only 50% make it straight after the second. The weirdest thing is that, overall, taking both breaks as equal gives a 61% chance of success whether before or after the break! This is basically saying that it makes no difference overall to be either side of a commercial break, although it seems to be best to be either after the first or before the second.

So finally to absolute position; the easiest thing to track! This is always the first thing people look at when deciding whether an entry has been favoured or disadvantaged by the draw and with good reason. As we’ve already seen, coming in the first few entries is quite obviously a disadvantage, whereas closing the show means you’re almost certain to make it! However, there is one problem. The semi-final length varies year on year, so it’s towards the end of the show, the significance of the placing varies. For example, 16th can be the final song, or second last or third last even; and as we’ve seen, this has a large impact on a song’s chances of success. Basically, the later in the show you go, the less relevant the number of songs before you becomes, and the importance of the number of songs following you increases. As a result, the following graphs have been created by taking the first 11 places in running order position, but the final 7/8 are taken counting backwards (so 19th is all the songs which performed last in the semi etc.) This means some songs are counted twice, but it gives a better picture of songs’ chances!

Semi Final 1Semi Final 2

So let’s consider for a moment what this means for this year’s contest! One slight complication this year is that we don’t yet know when the commercial breaks will be. One assumes that the first will be after the fifth song, so good news for our sixth placed songs (Romania and Montenegro), but it’s not looking so good for Belgium and Malta. In the first semi, the second break will probably be after either the 13th song (Iceland) or the 14th song (Czech Republic). Czech Republic is in a great spot in 14th, but if this could be neutered a little if they are following the break. Australia (3rd), Poland (11th) and Cyprus (15th) will all be a little worried about their chances, but Slovenia and Latvia will be happy about closing out the show. In the second semi, the break will either be after Norway or Switzerland. If it’s after Switzerland it’ll be interesting to see if Belarus follows the pattern of songs following the second break (50% chance of making it) or songs five from the end (86% chance). Russia (3rd), San Marino (11th) and Bulgaria may have concerns about their chances, but Estonia and Israel should be more confident. Of course, running order is far from the only factor determining how well a song will do, but it’s interesting to see if the patterns of previous years are repeated this year! If we go on running order chances alone, then we’d expect the following qualifiers:

So I may say “I told you so” if Ireland unexpectedly qualify or if Australia surprisingly miss out: the running order told you so!

Does running order really matter that much, or is it all needlessly over-analysed? What do #YOU think? Share your thoughts with us below or on our forum!

Featured Image credit; Eurovision Ireland

]]>A History of Eurovision: 1066 to 1217http://escunited.com/a-history-of-eurovision-1066-to-1217/
Sat, 01 Apr 2017 07:33:24 +0000http://escunited.com/?p=28746Whilst it is believed by many to have begun in 1956 in Switzerland, the Eurovision Song Contest has, in fact, existed in one form or another for a number of years. Recent research by Prof. A. Prillis from Valetta University has uncovered a surprising sequence of events throughout the ages. It seems that the contest can be traced as far back as the mid-11th century, although certain scholars believe that the roots could go as far back as the Roman Empire. The evidence for Roman origin is sketchy as best; relying mostly on a few vague quotes from various Roman authors, such as in Caesar’s Gallic Wars where he refers to “Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres” (Gaul is always divided into three parts) and some commentators have taken this to refer to Rome’s 53 BC entry “Gallia” with its unusual mix of lyre, male vocals and hobnail boots. There are also various interpretations of Tacitus’ account of the Claudian invasion of Britannia being an excuse to find out how they were producing such successful entries for the contests of the late-30s, early 40s AD. However, we shall not concern ourselves with such idle and unsubstantiated gossip, and instead turn our attention to Prof. Prillis’ research.

She begins her work with a discussion of what she believes was the first contest. This was the result of many years’ coordination by the much revered English King, Edward the Confessor. England was the natural choice of location for such a contest, as it had enjoyed a number of years of peace, as well as having a large number of continental connections through various royal marriages. The contest was arranged for April 1066, but sadly in January, Edward died. After much discussion, it was decided to go ahead with the contest, but with a short postponement out of respect for the dead King. In the well-known Bayeux Tapestry, a comet can be seen in April and Prof. Prillis believes that this indicates the original date for the contest “passing by”. The original list of contestants posed a huge problem for Prof. Prillis’ investigation, as there appears to be no written record of the competitors. We do, however, have an idea of the participating nations. England, evidently as the host nation, had an entry, as did Normandy, Brittany and Flanders (France, it seems, didn’t send an entry at this time; probably in objection to the English hosting). The Norwegians also sent an entry, but they appeared to have got the wrong location as they turned up in the North of England as opposed to London. The resulting chaos led to three major battles and a new King of England, but the winner of the contest remains less certain, even with this latest research.

Women weren’t even allowed to watch the contest until 1421 – Bayeux Tapestry

One of the many complaints about modern Eurovision is that it includes countries which are not really European, but it seems this has very longstanding routes. Prof. Prillis has uncovered a document, the “codex irreveratus papalis” which seems to detail the early contest organisers or, as they were known at the time, “Popes”. It seems that Israel was an early winner, as the Pope in 1095, Urban “city dweller”, called for all Europeans to head over there, undoubtedly for the contest in Jerusalem. It seems that Israel won at least another seven times, as various “Popes” called for further mass trips over there over the following two hundred or so years.

In these early days, it seems that the contest was not held every year, although this is likely in part due to the travelling time in this period. Contestants would have to set out months in advance of the contest, and collecting televotes could literally take years. Very few records of televotes survive from the early years of the contest, although Prof. Prillis and her team believe that the “Domesday Book” in England in 1086 is a list of the televoters who voted for the winning entry that year; “Dome’s Day” from Byzantium in celebration of the Hagia Sophia. Obviously no National Finals were held in this early period, due to the obvious expense of getting people together for them. To be chosen as an entrant was a great honour for people, as it was generally the local ruler who would choose them. In this period, due to the constantly shifting map of Europe, it is very hard to trace which countries participated year by year. Clearly it was possible to enter even if you were just a Dukedom or such, which led to a record number of German entries in 1147 with no fewer than 37 entries in that language. Unsurprisingly, it also led to the most convincing winner “Scherz des Tages” which won with over 450 points and 35 “douze points”.

The Dome which inspired the most succesful entry until 2016 – David Bjorgen

German domination was exemplified when, in 1193, Richard the Lionheart, the King of England, entered himself into the contest with his song “Lavie en rose” (Pink Gardrobe) and won, despite getting into a fight with the Austrian entrant, Leopold, over who had the best lion on their flag. This ended with Richard being imprisoned in Austria for a year and he was only released after a huge payment to the Germans and a promise (only revealed in 1213) to give England’s 12 to Austria every year for the rest of Richard’s life. This controversial agreement resulted in an angry response from France when they found out, cumulating in an invasion and attempt to force a similar agreement on England in 1216 which very nearly forced England out of the contest. Prof. Prillis reckons that it was this that led to the Treaty of Lambeth clauses which prevented any country being obliged to give points to another. Unfortunately no copy of the Treaty has survived, but she believes that these clauses would have been signed by all participating countries at the time.

So next time, we’ll be looking at 1217 onwards into the 14th Century and the impact as the German states expanded eastwards, as well as investigating the impact of May D’Ittuppe’s work on current thinking on the contest as Martin Luther led the Reformation to reduce the influence and power of the Contest organisers!

Is Prof. A. Prillis fooling us with her research, or is this the start of an exciting new chapter in the Eurovision history books? What do #YOU think? Share your thoughts with us below or on our forum!

Featured Image credit: British Library

]]>Scandalous Selections Part 2: How DO You Do A National Final?http://escunited.com/scandalous-selections-part-2-how-do-you-do-a-national-final/
Sun, 26 Mar 2017 19:16:07 +0000http://escunited.com/?p=28664This editorial is written from the opinion of the author and does not represent the views of the other editors, the EBU or escYOUnited as a whole.

In my previous article, I discussed how Sweden, Slovenia and Spain managed to select songs which were far from being the televoters’ favourites despite there being nominal 50% jury/50% televote voting systems. What was less clear was what would be a sensible alternative to the methods used by each country. So this article will have a look over each and try and work out an “ideal” method that maximises the chance of a winner both jury and televote are happy with.

The first question we have to ask is why have a jury? Some countries just went 100% televote to select their entry this year (such as Malta, Romania and Switzerland), but the problem with this method is that it ignores the fact that Eurovision itself is only 50% televote. If a song only appeals to them and would get ignored by the juries, then success will be harder to come by. The juries are there to, theoretically, judge a song solely based on its artistic merit, as opposed to their own personal tastes and are an important part of the contest as such. This is not meant as a defence of the juries (that’s a whole separate debate!), merely to point out the role that they play in the contest and therefore the need, really, to have them in a National Final if success is the target. It is possible, although difficult, to do well at the contest with only appealing to televoters or juries, although Poland’s Michał Szpak proved last year that it was possible to do well even ignoring an abysmal jury score! As long as the juries are in the contest itself, it seems sensible to include them in a National Final.

OK, so sometimes you *CAN* do well even if the juries hate your song – Eurovision.tv

So we have a jury; we have a televote. Where do we go from here? Typically the split is, as at Eurovision, 50:50. Certain countries have chosen differently, either reducing the televote to effectively one jury member (Albania) or a different split such as 60:40 (Georgia) or 70:30 (Greece). I have to admit, I don’t quite understand the point of changing the split given that it’s 50:50 at Eurovision itself. Why not preserve that split in the National Final as well, so that the balance of power is equal? Possibly some countries want to further empower their televoters in order to generate more national interest in their entry. There is, of course, a major problem even when going for a 50:50 split: Your method of doing it can change the winner.

Confused? It seems a little crazy at first, no? Surely when the televotes and jury are balanced, then neither side has an advantage? Well, that’s not quite true in reality. As I touched upon in Part 1, the way the jury votes and televotes are combined can literally change the winner. In Slovenia and Spain, the individual juror voter were added together and that was the jury total for each song. The televotes were totalled and then a pre-assigned number of points was assigned to first, second, third etc. This means that a one televote difference between two songs was worth the same as a thousand televote difference, whereas a one point difference in the jury votes was worth exactly that: One point. Consequently, when it was revealed that Omar Naber had won only 40% of the televotes of BQL, but this was only a difference of 12 points in the televote, it felt extremely unfair that the overwhelming televote favourite seemed a lot closer to second than they actually were. In Spain, it was a similar story, where Mirela’s 27k televote lead became a difference of 12 points alone… So the obvious solution is to make both televote and jury proportional!

The absurdity of non-proportional televotes… wikipedia.org

In both Slovenia and Spain, this would have allowed the televoters’ favourite to win. At first glance, this seems to be the fairest method as it puts both jury and televote on an equal playing field. However, on further inspection, that’s not quite true… The jurors had to give all songs (or six out of eight in Slovenia) points, whereas televoters can just vote for one song multiple times if they wish. In Spain, the minimum number of points that a song could have received from the three jurors was 15 (5 from each) and the maximum was 36 (12 from each juror), or 25% of the jury votes. Now, Mirela got 36% of the televote, which is more than anyone could have got from the jury, regardless of how much they liked it. To put it simply, a song could be the least favourite of all the jury members and it would only need 15% more of the televote than any other song to win if fully proportional voting had been used. Of course, this is quite an extreme example in Spain, as there were only three jurors. More jurors decrease the chance of this being able to happen, as the votes will spread out more naturally, but no song could ever receive a huge proportion of the jury votes compared to the others, whereas this is totally possible in a televote. Consequently, the jury is, in a sense, weaker under this system than a televote.

Having said that, it’s exactly the system used by Sweden in Melodifestivalen! Here we had a 12 song final, 11 international juries and an example of the televote being hugely weakened versus the jury. As mentioned previously, by allowing the televoters to vote for each song up to five times for free via the “heart app”, the votes are very evenly spread, such that the difference between first and last in the televoters’ points was only 7 more than the gap between first and second in the jury votes. Having 12 songs also means that the televote points will be quite widely spread as there is so much choice. This was the total opposite of the situation in Slovenia and Spain where the televotes had clear preferences (43% and 36% respectively versus 12% in Sweden).

So what is the solution? Well, firstly, make the televoters the tiebreaker (looking at you Spain…) this allows the viewers to feel empowered and as if they really made an impact on the result. A perfect example of this is Ukraine last year, who had a tie in the National Final, broken by the televoting results, and, well, the rest is history! The solution, for me, is stick with proportional voting for both televote and jury in order to allow the public a decent say in the result. However, there should not be more than eight songs in the final and the heart app idea from Melodifestivalen is not one I’d recommend! Having too many songs dilutes the votes and stops people from really clearly stating their favourites. In an ideal world, I’d actually advocate a system where televoters become jury members themselves and order the songs in the same way that the jury does and the televoters totals get assigned in the same way as the jury’s ones do. This would, of course, force the televoters to use an app based system or equivalent, which could be tricky to implement, but it would put the televoters and the jury on the same level. Personally, I see the role of the jury in National Finals to “fine-tune” the televoting results but where they don’t have the chance to massively alter the results themselves. If there is a clear televoting winner, then the jury should not be able to change that result, but if things are tight, then the jury may sometimes be able to alter the winner to find an entry that, whilst possibly being slightly less favoured by the televoters, would be a lot more popular with the jury. Hopefully that way everyone would be happy!

Is that really the solution, or is there a better way out there? What do #YOU think? Share your thoughts with us below or on our forum!